It’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday in Brooklyn, and a school bus idling outside the Barclays Center is filling with bleary-eyed 20- and 30-somethings. The radio is already blasting Britney Spears’ “Toxic” from Z100. To an outsider, it might look like a trip on the River Styx of hangovers -— but it’s actually the early rumblings of a ski party.
“It’s kind of hilarious that they started pumping music as soon as we got on,” says Teff Nichols, 26, of Bed-Stuy. “I don’t think I’ve been on a school bus since middle school.”
There is definitely a middle-school aesthetic to the trip on the NYC Snow Bus, a business that a Brooklyn couple started this winter to make outdoor adventures more fun and accessible — and, mostly, more affordable — to cooped-up young city dwellers.
The transportation is a standard yellow bus that bumps and moans along the highway on harsh suspension that bounces you up and down in the barely padded seats. It’s a day trip to a nearby ski resort that drops everyone back off in the city by 7 p.m., giving it a feeling of a school field trip — except with the promise of booze at the end.
Upper East Sider Lucy Redoglia, 29, in pink snow pants, sits and braids her hair to get ready for a day of snowboarding. She’s already taken the bus twice this season, and is bringing more friends along this time. In terms of price and convenience — she got on at the bus’ second pickup point, in Union Square — it’s the easiest access she’s had to a mountain since she could drive to one in her home state of California.
“Every once in a while, I get scared that I’m going to die on a school bus,” she jokes. “But kids take them every day.”
The destination is Mountain Creek Resort in Vernon, NJ, about a 90-minute ride. Not exactly the Swiss Alps.
The lodge there is so overrun with families that it’s nearly impossible to find a seat to eat lunch on a weekend. And the slopes? Some of the experienced skiers on the bus describe them as more family-friendly than challenging. But the distance and price ($67 for the bus ride and a lift pass, only a dollar more than what the resort charges for a lift pass on its own) make it good enough for the gang on the bus. (Another bus picks riders up from Williamsburg and Astoria before heading for the hills.)
“Everything is included, and you don’t have to worry about anything,” says Tiago Varros, 36, of Soho, who had to get five friends together to rent a car the last time he tried to go skiing.
The snow bus grew out of the NYC Beach Bus, which Scott Lebowitz and his girlfriend, Ayo Omojola, both 28, began running last summer, taking several busloads of people a day from Park Slope and Williamsburg to Rockaway Beach. The Snow Bus has a different vibe. In summer, people climb over the seats to get beers and pass around onehitters while ignoring their sunburns to dance in the aisles. For safety reasons, the Snow Bus holds off on the free beer until after the bus returns. Riders are invited out to a bar near the dropoff points (Die Koelner Bierhalle in Park Slope, in our case) to share some pitchers of beer and get to know each other better.
The two buses they rent each weekend are from a yard in Brooklyn, and they only look old. They’re as recent as 2011 models, but the trips can put 100 miles on them each weekend.
“We’re the only ones that beat them up and go super far,” Omojola says.
At first glance, Omojola and Lebowitz make an unusual couple: He’s a Canarsie native who works in construction; she’s a paralegal who was born in Nigeria and spent time in London before moving to Brooklyn. They met in high school, but their mutual love of outdoor adventures — from snowboarding to kayaking — kept them organizing trips together. Until, one day, a friend suggested: Why not turn it into a business? The instant success — the Snow Bus has been selling out nearly every weekend, just like the Beach Bus did in the summer — showed that they were on to something.
Their plan is to turn it into a full-time operation, expanding into other nearby adventures such as apple picking, kayaking and hiking. The trick, they say, is that they’re treating it as inviting a group of friends to tag along on their adventures, not a business.
“People keep asking me, ‘How long is it for?’ ” Lebowitz says. “I say, ‘For the rest of my life.’ ”
For more info, go to: nycsnowbus.com.